Endangered: A Zoo Mystery Part 3

He came toward me, huge in the front beams, triggering predation-survival strategies. Don't run, don't cower, pray it's a bluff charge. I stepped forward, holding my arms out to look bigger. "Stealing? You buy smuggled wildlife and let them die because you can't be bothered to take care of them, and you say we're stealing? We're trying to save their lives, and you can rot in h.e.l.l." I hated that my voice shook.

He frowned and his head jerked back a little. Denny grabbed my arm, and I shook him off.

"You poison people with meth," I ranted. "You are guilty of crime after crime. So don't talk to me about stealing, you greedy, heartless b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

That last was a little over the top, but I was full of adrenaline. I could hear the sons yanking on all the van doors.

The father's eyes narrowed to slits and his face darkened. "Shut your face, you insolent harlot." He moved fast and again I was sprawled in the mud. The black Boxer mix appeared out of nowhere, barking in my face like the hound of h.e.l.l. s.h.i.t. Where were all those deputies and sergeants and inspectors?

Tipton yelled, "Jeff, Tom, you idiots. It's locked, and she's got the key. Get over here and take it away from her."

The sons closed in, one on either side. Still on my rump, I looked around for a branch or rock and found nothing within reach. My options seemed to be flinging moss or hurling my weight at one of them in hopes he slipped and fell. Before I tried either, the father stopped yelling. He wavered a little and sank to his knees by the front b.u.mper.

Even the dog froze.

"Huhnnn," Tipton said in the vibrating silence. "Not now," he whispered to something only he could see. He crossed his heavy arms in front of his chest, weaving back and forth in the muddy gravel. He began to sag and, with glacial inevitability, fell onto his face.

No one moved. Snowflakes sparkled as they floated onto his dark jacket and winked out.

I got to my feet and grabbed his arm, trying to pull him onto his side. The dog went nuts, lunging and snarling at me. The smaller son grabbed the dog around the neck. The bearded son pushed me aside and pulled his father onto his back. He leaned over, clutched the front of his jacket, and shook him. "Wake up! What's the matter? What should we do?"

Denny crouched next to him. "He's not breathing."

We looked at each other. What was our responsibility here? I shoved the son out of the way, sank to my knees astride the father, and started chest compressions. Two-handed, straight-arm shove, let up, shove, let up, shove, one hundred times a minute. It didn't feel like the dummy we'd practiced on in first aid cla.s.s. This guy was big and he was fat and he had several layers of clothing on. I'm not pet.i.te, but my weight was barely adequate to budge his chest. I was sweating almost immediately.

Denny fumbled with his cell phone.

"One-of-you-start-breathing," I said to the sons, one word per compression.

The bearded one stood wild-eyed and paralyzed. The smaller one crouched with one arm around the dog. I sacrificed my rhythm to yell, "Get down here and start blowing in his mouth."

They looked terrified. The smaller one said, "We don't know how."

"Put your mouth tight over his and blow. Right now."

Neither moved.

"I can't get a signal," Denny said. "You-go to the house and call 911."

The smaller son loped off in the right direction, the dog following. The other winked-an eye twitch-and ran after him. Denny knelt beside me and blew hard into the beard, then again.

I held up a hand when the man moved. His lips twitched. His chest rose on its own. Could this have actually worked? We'd restored him to life? He coughed a little and wheezed. Denny and I crouched over him. I wondered if I should turn him onto his side.

"Look...after...stridd...er," and the eyes closed again. Snow flecks disappeared into his beard.

No more breathing. I resumed chest compressions, and Denny blew into his mouth, an endless cycle.

A deputy skidded to a stop next to me, followed by another. I relinquished my position and got to my feet, arms trembling. The two of them were smooth and skillful and, better yet, they had a CPR mask. The one doing chest compressions said, "Defibrillator in a minute."

But I was pretty sure it was over.

I glimpsed the two sons standing at the road's edge like lost sheep waiting for a shepherd. A wailing ambulance arrived bearing paramedics, who disembarked with their gear, knelt over the father for a minute or two, and straightened back up. The deputies nodded and one reached for his radio.

When I looked again, the sons were shadows backing away from the angled light beams and erratic clots of snowflakes. They stepped through tall ferns and vanished among close-s.p.a.ced trunks.

Chapter Five.

Denny drove hunched over the steering wheel staring into the wipers. Wet snow made raspberries on the windshield, obliterated in a steady rhythm. Sad little chirps came from the rear of the van, also small chewing and scratching noises. I was shivering from cold and lingering adrenaline, unable to decide whether unzipping my jacket and letting in the heater blast was a better option than keeping it zipped. I struggled with my boots and finally got them off, wet socks, too. Boots that leaked were the curse of my profession. "Why would a judge let these guys out on bail? What was he thinking?"

Denny threw open a hand, focused on me instead of the road. "Only one possible reason-that family's got connections. Mover and shaker customers for hash or meth. Or they're part of some religious group. Maybe they spent all that drug money on extremist politicians and the judge is connected with that. Or-"

"I'm still freezing. Turn the heater up, will you? My pants are soaked."

"Ire, it's ninety degrees in here. It's maxed out. Take your pants off and use the towels in back."

I knew he was right. Bare skin is warmer than wet clothes. My feet were proving that. Still...

Denny glanced at me sidelong. "I've seen you naked. I can take it."

Also true, although that was long ago and a different Iris Oakley.

I unclipped the seatbelt and wriggled out of my damp jacket, tossing it in back over an animal carrier. Then the pants. I grabbed a towel covering the mesh door of one of the carriers. Seatbelt back on, towel over my knees. No dignity, but slowly warmer. "They pushed me in the mud. Twice."

"Yeah, I thought we were doomed. Jumped us out of nowhere."

"That Jerome Tipton is a piece of work. Was." Despite his anger and power, death had come and taken him. "Once he was out of commission, those sons were useless." I pulled out my cell phone for the third time to check that it still worked and wiped a little more mud off.

"Robotic storm troopers obeying their commander. I'd bet my next paycheck they skip bail. They're probably heading for Idaho. That farm needs a good exorcism. Doesn't always work, but sometimes it makes a difference."

I drew a deep, halting breath. "Denny, kudos for mouth-breathing that ugly b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Don't know if I could have done it. I feel like we should get vaccinated."

"I rinsed my mouth from my water bottle. If he'd been chewing tobacco..."

Heat was seeping in. "I guess I should feel bad that it didn't work. I wonder if CPR ever does."

"Sure. When I was a kid, a friend of mine got stoned and fell in the river. My mom's boyfriend pulled him out and held him upside down to drain. Then he did the CPR thing. Kid was fine."

"How old was he?"

"The kid? Fourteen or fifteen."

"This was on the commune where you and your mother lived."

"Yeah, before she moved to Jack's farm, my step-dad. He was a pretty cool guy-Crow, the guy who did the rescue. He turned me on to snakes. He used to drop acid and play with his baby rattlesnake. He wouldn't let me near it. But we found garter snakes in the meadow and a king snake once. He knew a lot about frogs and fish and stuff like that. I was really sorry when he left for Baja."

I chewed on this. "That scene was about separating from regular society. Follow your own bliss and use a lot of drugs."

Denny made a face. "Don't go thinking it was like that hostile outfit we just left. Boss Tipton was totally autocratic and rageful. Strictly ego-driven. No one at Aquilegia Farm would have put up with him. They were all about therapeutic acceptance, but they knew when to tell someone to hit the road."

I hadn't heard Denny talk about his upbringing for a long time. It beat reliving the helplessness of sitting in the mud waiting for the Tiptons to grab me. I remembered something. "You saw that photographer? In the black jacket with the knit cap. He came back when the ambulance did and took a bunch of pictures. I bet he has a scanner and heard the 911 call. We might end up in the papers." That could cost me professional points.

"Neal can't harp on us for that. Not like we had a choice."

True. The curator disapproved of his staff talking to the press without approval. But someone snapping our pictures while we performed CPR on a dying man wasn't quite the same as an in-depth interview. It shouldn't be a problem.

We pushed through the night without talking for a little time. The weather G.o.ds switched to hail mixed with rain, then shut everything off. In half a daze, I stared at the road. White dashes against wet dark asphalt were mesmerizing. The van hit a pothole, and I jerked awake. I stretched my back. "We'd better stop to eat and buy gas. Keep an eye out for a cafe or something."

"Robby?"

"With my parents."

After a silence, I said, "I wonder if he knew his daughter was shot. Does the mother know? Any of them?"

Wanda Tipton had lost a husband and a daughter. Her home was overrun with strangers. A lonely future lay ahead. Or maybe widowhood from the tyrannical Tipton was a net improvement. No, losing a child trumped everything. If Robby died, I would flat-out never recover.

Obsessing about ways my child might die was not what was needed. I diverted myself onto the Doberman. Maybe Ken from Animal Control would catch her tomorrow. I hoped the brothers wouldn't get her back or any of the other dogs. I'd seen their dog food, and it was the cheapest available. The dog houses were a joke.

Here I was worrying about dogs when a girl lay dead.

Denny said, "I can't believe no one noticed her for two days. Laying there half frozen all that time."

So young...dead before she had any chance to dodge poverty and crime. I remembered peeking into what had to be her bedroom. Crumpled on the polyester bed cover was a picture torn from a magazine-William and Kate in their wedding finery. I guessed that cops had searched the room and pulled the photo of royalty out of a hiding place. Jerome would not have approved of a girl's fascination with fame and glamour.

We ate at a pizza place in Battle Ground, my still-damp pants back on. Denny told me a great deal about a frog, Darwin's frog. "The male has this hole below his tongue."

"To his lungs. Birds have that."

"No, not to his lungs. To his vocal sac. After the eggs hatch, he sucks the tadpoles inside the sac and keeps them there. When they metamorphose into little frogs, he coughs them out."

"Is this relevant to tonight?" I asked. "Some a.n.a.logy to Old Man Tipton? If so, I don't get it."

He ignored me, helped himself to a cherry tomato from my salad, and detoured onto turtles that never age. "There's this rumor about alligator snappers. People catch them to eat and sometimes really big ones have a musket ball or stone spear tip in them. They might be hundreds of years old, way older than anyone thought they would live."

"Just a rumor?"

"Yeah. I've tried to confirm it. No luck so far. But this one is true. Blandings turtles in Michigan: If they make it to adult size, the only thing that stops them is getting run over by a car. Or maybe a bear. Something with powerful jaws. They live forever and keep on reproducing, too. No senility at all."

He was talking to keep from thinking. I let him ramble. It made me feel better, too. A good time to talk about Marcie? Not when I was this wrecked.

We pulled into the employee lot at the zoo about eight o'clock. I'd called the night guard, who met us and opened up the hospital. The quarantine room was nicely set up with perches, food, and water pans. Each bird flew a circuit of the room when I released it, then settled on a perch. They sat erect with their feathers sleeked down tight, holding themselves rigid and ready to bolt. I turned the lights out and left them with my fingers crossed, grateful that they had all survived the day.

Denny returned from checking on the tortoises.

"Everyone good?" I asked.

He shrugged. "For now. Tortoises die slow."

"What are we going to do about the macaw pair?"

"Not our problem. We've dealt with enough Tipton c.r.a.p, and I'm way behind here."

"They'll die unless we get them out of there. I'd rather give a wolverine an enema, but somebody's got to do it."

"Call Neal. He can send someone else out. Pete maybe. Or Arnie."

I didn't have Neal's personal cell, but the night guard did. I stood in the hallway outside the quarantine room, leaning against the wall, and dialed while Denny and the night guard waited. Neal answered with a suspicious, "Yeah?"

I recapped the day-Amazon parrots loaded and now in quarantine, one murdered girl discovered, an attack by drug dealers, a dead patriarch. "We got out ahead of the ninja a.s.sa.s.sins," I said, gallows humor to steady the hand that held the phone.

A silence. "For some reason, I believe all this."

"The ninja a.s.sa.s.sins part isn't really true." I was too tired to stand up. I slid down to the floor and sat with my legs stuck out. My pants were still damp at the waist.

"You and Denny are in one piece?"

"Yeah."

Denny squatted next to me so he could hear both sides of the conversation.

"The van?"

I a.s.sured Neal that the van was fine.

"You can give me the details tomorrow. Thanks for the update. Go home."

Not so fast. "Somebody has to go back and get two macaws tomorrow."

"Nope. Mission accomplished. The feds can deal."

"We can't trust the Tipton boys to feed them. The electrician shut the heat off at the barns, and he might shut it off at the house." My heart sank at the thought, but my mouth kept on. "We have to go back."

"I'll call the feds. They can step up to this one."

"Neal, you told them we'd take care of it. These are big, bad macaws, and we're the experts. We just have to throw two birds in the van and get out." A girl can dream.

A long pause. I could hear him moving around, pacing maybe. "Only if you have a police escort every single minute."

"Absolutely." No way was I doing this without backup. "I need someone to go with me."

"Denny. Call me tomorrow as soon as you get back."